Wednesday, January 31, 2018

“This is the road we are traveling. It is a road that leads to internal collapse and tyranny”—Chris Hedges

“The
problem with Donald Trump is not that he is imbecilic and inept—it is that he
has surrendered total power to the oligarchic and military elites. They get
what they want. They do what they want. Although the president is a one-man
wrecking crew aimed at democratic norms and institutions, although he has
turned the United States into a laughingstock around the globe, our national
crisis is embodied not in Trump but the corporate state’s now unfettered
pillage.

“Trump,
who has no inclination or ability to govern, has handed the machinery of
government over to the bankers, corporate executives, right-wing think tanks,
intelligence chiefs and generals. They are eradicating the
few regulations and laws that inhibited a naked kleptocracy.
They are dynamiting the institutions, including the
State Department, that served interests other than corporate profit
and are stacking the courts with right-wing, corporate-controlled ideologues.
Trump provides the daily entertainment; the elites handle the business of
looting, exploiting and destroying.

“Once
democratic institutions are hollowed out, a process begun before the election
of Trump, despotism is inevitable. The press is shackled. Corruption and theft
take place on a massive scale. The rights and needs of citizens are irrelevant.
Dissent is criminalized. Militarized police monitor, seize and detain Americans
without probable cause. The rituals of democracy become farce. This is the road
we are traveling. It is a road that leads to internal collapse and tyranny, and
we are very far down it…

“The
Russia investigation—launched when Robert Mueller became special counsel in May
and which appears to be focused on money laundering, fraud and shady business
practices, things that have always characterized Trump’s financial empire—is
unlikely to unseat the president. He will not be impeached for mental
incompetence, over the emoluments
clause or for obstruction of justice, although he is guilty on
all these counts. He is useful to those who hold real power in the corporate
state, however much they would like to domesticate him.

“Trump’s
bizarre ramblings and behavior also serve a useful purpose. They are a colorful
diversion from the razing of democratic institutions. As cable news networks
feed us stories of his trysts with a porn actress and outlandish tweets, the
real work of the elites is being carried out largely away from public view. The
courts are stacked with Federalist
Society judges, the fossil fuel industry is plundering public lands
and the coastlines and ripping up regulations that protected us from its
poisons, and the Pentagon, given carte blanche, is engaged in an orgy of
militarism with a trillion-dollar-a-year budget and about 800 military bases in
scores of countries around the world…”

For
the entire article, The Useful idiocy of Donald Trump by Chris Hedges, click here.

Teacher/Poet/Musician

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Persona

A writer must “know and have an ever-present consciousness that this world is a world of fools and rogues… tormented with envy, consumed with vanity; selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions… He should free himself of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, politics…” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). “The nobility of the writer's occupation lies in resisting oppression, thus in accepting isolation” —Albert Camus (1913-1960). “What are you gonna do” —Bertha Brown (1895-1987).